THE 1972 CAMPAIGN

RENSSELAERVILLE, N. Y., Oct. 29—Three experts in public‐opinion polling — two of them pollsters—agreed, at conference here this weekend, that political polls did not have a “bandwagon effect.”

Ten days before a Presidential election in which all the polls show President Nixon far ahead of his Democratic rival, Senator George McGovern, one of the poll experts said there might even be a slight reverse movement based on sympathy for the underdog.

“I have never in my life seen any hard evidence that people are influenced by polling results,” George Gallup, founder of the Gallup Poll, said. “If there is any effect, it is so negligible that it is impossible to measure.”

Any Influence Denied

“I guarantee that no one in this room could be influenced by the polls,” said Daniel Yankelovich, who has conducted numerous voter‐analysis polls for many newspapers, including The New York Times.

“I see no bandwagon effect,” said Paul Lazarsfeld, a professor of social science at Columbia University.

The three public‐opinion specialists were among a dozen writers, professors and political experts taking part in a three day conference on “PresidentPolitics‐People” at the Institute on Man and Science, just outside this village in the Helderberg Hills, about 30 miles southwest of Albany. About 150 people attended.

The conference was part of a series of programs organized by Fairleigh Dickinson University to study critical problems in communications. Grants to support the programs were made by the university, the institute, The New York Times and The Record, which is published in Hackensack, N. J. Lester Markel, former Sunday editor of The Times, directed the program.

Mr. Markel asked the three polling experts if the poll results had any influence on voters who read them.

Mr. Yankelovich listed these: “An immediate and swift” drying up of campaign contributions to candidates far behind, a drop in the numbers and enthusiasm of volunteer workers and a possible drop in the number of people who would vote.

“In this campaign, a number of people have said that they don't want Nixon to win by a big margin,” he added. “Some of them are for McGovern for that reason, even if they don't want him to win.”

In addition to the three experts on polls, others who participated were Betty Friedan, the feminist leader; George Reedy, dean of the journalism college at Marquette University; Sidney Hyman of the University of Chicago, Robert B. Semple Jr., White House correspondent of The New York Times; Nasrollah Fatemi, director of the graduate school of international studies at Fairleigh Dickinson, and David White of Boston University.

The discussions, which started on Friday night and ended at Sunday noon, ranged over major segments of the Presidential election, including voters, the media, public opinion, the polls and the impact of the expected Vietnam settlement. Almost all of the speakers agreed that the issues facing the nation had been subordinated in the campaign to personalities.

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